In the Northern Black Sea coast is concentrated half of the objects and names familiar to us from the course of ancient and medieval history or literature. For example, Ovidian Lake. For many centuries local inhabitants and colonizers named the Dniester estuary. Or Tsargrad throat, which, despite its sound, does not «decorate» the neighborhood of Istanbul, but is a strait connecting the Dniester estuary with the Black Sea.
Why so much attention is paid to some strait, and its name is consonant with the name of the capital of the Byzantine Empire? The fact is that the huge Dniester estuary was once blocked by the Budak Spit, which made it problematic to get fresh water to the sea, to whose basin it belongs. The river found a way out of the situation and washed a small strait into the sandy spit. Due to the fact that the port cities of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky and Ovidiopol are located on the banks of the Dniester estuary itself, the strait has long been a strategically important object for water transportation and deservedly received the name of Tsargrad throat.
But in order that the land transport coming from the extreme south of the Odessa region — Vilkoveo, Kiliya, Izmail, in the direction of Odessa, did not have to bypass an extra 40 kilometers around the perimeter of the Dniester estuary, a bridge was built. By the way, the bridge was not a simple bridge, but a drawbridge, a railroad-automobile bridge.
The idea to build a bridge between two torn parts of Budak spit appeared in 1827. But the funds allocated by the Society of Black Sea Lighthouses were enough only for the installation of the «Dniester-Tsaregrad lighthouse». After Bessarabia was torn away from Romania, the USSR paid much attention to the integration of the region into the community of brotherly republics. The money was found and on December 5, 1955 the first railway train crossed the divorce bridge.
The body of Budakskaya kosa is sandy and shaky, so the new bridge could not become a globally stable structure like Paton’s brainchild or the Eresun Bridge. It is not high and consists of separate metal sections. Only one fragment is dynamic — the central one, which rises during the passage of «sea-river» type transport from the Dniester estuary to the Black Sea and in the opposite direction.
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Theoretically, the bridge should be drawn 5 times a day. Due to the wear and tear of the structure, it is currently raised only twice a day for 40 minutes. During this time, multi-kilometer traffic jams are formed in front of the bridge by motorists who brought their families on vacation in the Black Sea.
Despite the fact that this drawbridge has already become one of the attractions of Zatoka, the idea of building an alternative commercial bridge (most likely in the area of Karolino-Bugaz), which will reduce the load on the old bridge and facilitate tourists’ access to the recreational treasures of the Odessa region. In addition to the new bridge, it is proposed to create a modern marina — a parking lot for yachts, and a dozen luxury hotels, restaurants on the shore of the Dnestrovsky Liman.